MANCHESTER, N.H. - Nevada Republicans have shifted their presidential caucuses to early February, a move that ends an increasingly bitter standoff among rival states and for the first time clarifies the path to the Republican presidential nomination.

There will be no voting before Christmas. That's despite warnings from New Hampshire's top election official that Nevada's initial insistence to host its contest in mid-January could force the Granite State to schedule the nation's first Republican primary election in roughly six weeks.

But facing boycott threats from campaigns, incentive offers from the Republican National Committee, and the private blessing of the Mitt Romney campaign, Nevada Republicans voted Saturday to set their caucuses for Feb. 4. It will be the West's first stop in the race for the Republican presidential nomination and the fifth contest overall, after Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida...

Florida decided Friday to hold its Republican presidential primary on Jan. 31, snubbing a party rule against fast-track delegate-selection for 2012 and triggering angry responses from traditional early voting states which will now likely rejigger their calendars to stay ahead.

The move actually thwarts efforts by both major political parties to delay presidential primaries and caucuses. Their aim has been to avoid a repeat of the 2008 scenario, when states jumped ahead of each other at that time in attempts to increase their influence in the process.

In Florida, a special nine-member committee appointed by legislative leaders and Gov. Rick Scott voted 7-2 to set the January date two days after House Speaker Dean Cannon announced that's what it was expected to do.

Cannon and other Florida GOP leaders said they didn't want to jump the traditional early states but wanted to make sure Florida was fifth, even the move was a violation of party rules...

NEW YORK (AP) - It sounded improbable on the surface that a New York City congressional district where Democrats have a 3-1 registration edge and have held office for nearly a century could even come close to electing a Republican to the U.S. House.

But voter frustration over the sour economy and President Barack Obama's policies made the improbable a reality, as a Republican political novice, Bob Turner, scored an upset victory in a special election Tuesday over David Weprin, a Democratic assemblyman from a prominent local political family.

The surprising results in the Brooklyn and Queens-area district portend a perilous national environment for Obama as he prepares to seek re-election next year.

Turner said as much when he stepped before cameras to claim victory Tuesday night.

"This message will resound for a full year. It will resound into 2012," said Turner, a retired broadcasting executive.

A Nevada judge on Wednesday gave ACORN, the defunct grass-roots community organization, the maximum fine for its illegal voter-registration scheme in that state.

District Court Judge Donald Mosley was blunt and unsparing in his criticism of the discredited activist group. Citing the long history of voter registration fraud allegations that engulfed ACORN across the country, he slapped the group with a $5,000 fine for violating Nevada election law during the 2008 presidential election.

Mosley, reading the pre-sentence report, listed a series of voter registration fraud allegations against ACORN workers. He said that if the claims have been true, then "It is making a mockery of our election process. If I had an individual in this courtroom...who was responsible for this kind of thing, I would put that person in prison for 10 years, hard time, and not think twice about it," he said. "To me this is reprehensible.

LOS ANGELES -- President Barack Obama headed west to sell his big picture deficit-reduction plan. But many people are waiting for a quick fix to their own economic problems caused chiefly by persistent unemployment and the crippled housing market.

Audiences in California and Nevada understood why it's important to get a handle on the deficit over the long term. Yet they made clear that the economic recovery hasn't fully taken hold in ways that are meaningful to them.

As Obama shifts into re-election mode, he will need to show that he hasn't lost his focus on jobs even as the conversation in Washington swings to paying down what the nation owes...

Ask the people of Harry Reid's hometown what they think about their neighbor and senator, and they'll give pretty much the same answer as the rest of Nevadans. They're divided. But ask a little more and it appears they might be leaning, ever so slightly, toward dumping the man who has represented them in Congress since 1983, and replacing him with Republican challenger Sharron Angle. Their sentiments -- closely split, maybe a little more Angle than Reid -- mirror the polls of the last few weeks. If Nevadans take those feelings to the voting booth on Election Day, they will hand Democrats the biggest single loss in what appears to be a terrible election season.

Even on a beautiful fall day, Searchlight can be a bleak place, with sun-bleached mobile homes outnumbering houses, buildings in various stages of disrepair, and cars slumped on flat tires.

Early in his career, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid took a pro-life position and once issued a defense of adding a human life amendment to protect the rights of unborn children.

But his watering down of his pro-life views to the point of spearheading the effort to pass a government takeover of the health care system that allows for abortion funding and prompts concerns about rationing, may ultimately prove to be his career’s undoing.

A new poll shows GOP challenger Sharron Angle heads into Election Day with the potential of pulling off the single biggest upset of the election cycle...`

Next Tuesday Democrats will receive a crushing rebuke. More to the point, voters will be delivering a verdict on the first two years of the Obama administration.

Midterm elections are almost always unpleasant experiences for the White House, especially when the economy is weak. But key races that should have been safe for the party in power demonstrate the extent to which President Obama and his policies have nationalized the election.

In Nevada, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a huge war chest in a state Mr. Obama won in 2008 by 12 points. Mr. Reid trails Sharron Angle by four points in the latest Rasmussen poll...

Conservatives have talked wistfully for years about eliminating the Education Department, but a host of Republican "tea party" candidates this election year are saying it's time to move beyond talk and force Congress to vote.

From West Virginia to Kentucky to Nevada, GOP Senate candidates have said they favor elimination of the Cabinet office, created as a separate department by President Carter in 1979 to elevate the federal government's profile on what had been considered a primarily local concern.

Senate candidate Rand Paul, in his Republican primary campaign in Kentucky, was among the first tea-party-backed candidates to revive the idea that the 30-year-old agency had failed students and that the states could do a better job...